<![CDATA[Eating Normal - Cookbook of the Month]]>

<![CDATA[Eating Normal - Cookbook of the Month]]>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:31:43 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[Make It Japanese - January 2024]]>Sat, 10 Feb 2024 12:19:47 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/make-it-japanese-january-2024

Over the last two years, some of my favorite faces in food media just… disappeared. Whatever happened at Buzzfeed cleansed familiar, comfortable personalities from the space while they recovered in their own way and moved on. Alvin got going with the Babish Culinary Universe. Andrew sometimes shows up at Watcher, and Inga is going solo. I wondered– where is Rie? Then I found out she had a cookbook coming out. Of course I bought it. I loved Rie.

Best known for her Make it Fancy series at Tasty, I wasn’t sure what to expect when Make It Japanese arrived on my doorstep. I knew that she was a knowledgeable cook. I knew that she originally came from Japan, and as a result, I first got to know her while she worked on the Worth It series as their interpreter. Food media is often about making something ridiculous and rarely about making it simple. Make it Japanese makes it simple.

I don’t eat heavily, and I live alone. Cookbooks that often include recipes to serve a family of four are too much for me in my current life. In all of the recipes I have tried while cooking from Make it Japanese, I come out with smaller portions of leftovers than I have while trying recipes from other sources. I am learning how to cook simple, worthwhile foods from Rie’s culture and her current lifestyle as a new mom. I’m not wasting my time.

Her pork bun recipe stood out to me right away. I love making steamed buns, and I’ve used the bao recipe from the Pixar short for this purpose for years. I almost always struggled with the dough, however. Something wasn’t quite right. The recipe made so many buns that my freezer would be full for a year with the remnants. Rie’s pork bun recipe included fewer ingredients and a smaller amount of dough, resulting in eight large steamed buns. The dough came together easily, and closing each bun did not feel like a struggle for my life. I told everyone who would listen that this was the easiest recipe for a pork bun I had ever tried.

I found that most recipes came together quickly and easily for someone at my skill level while I still pushed myself into trying new flavor combinations. I’ve made Onigiri before, but never of the grilled variety.

Accessibility - 5/5

As is the case with all cookbooks focused on a certain country’s cuisine, there can be some ingredient barriers. Asian ingredients are becoming more accessible across the country, and where your store may not be able to provide, online markets can. There are still plenty of recipes within the book that can be made using basic Asian pantry ingredients, such as her Japanese Potato Salad, that are widely available without having to order bonito flakes off of amazon.

I did not struggle with finding ingredients to cook a different recipe from this book multiple times a week at my local grocery store. For that reason, I rated Make it Japanese a full 5/5.

Difficulty - 5/5

There are a variety of recipes within Make it Japanese that can both challenge a seasoned home cook and help ease a newbie into the world of cooking simple Japanese food. I learned everything from how to make mochi donuts to the basics of cooking short grain sushi rice on the stovetop. I often utilize my Zojirushi, but the skill is now there.

Originality - ⅘

Variations on some of these recipes exist out in the world already. The originality of this cookbook’s recipes lies with the way they come together and are written to produce smaller servings than others. It’s a perfect book for someone like me who lives alone and often cooks only for themselves.

]]><![CDATA[The Essential Cookbook NYT-- Revised Edition]]>Fri, 07 Jan 2022 14:07:01 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/january-07th-2022

Our first cookbook of the month for 2022 was originally published more than ten years ago, but the revised edition of The Essential New York Times Cookbook compiled by Amanda Hessler, CEO of Food52, was released in November of 2021 to incorporate more of the New York TImes’ iconic recipes. I’m a sucker for historic cookbooks and antique cookbooks, and after watching a video on Food52 of Amanda cooking from this book, I was immediately curious about the book’s contents.

It promised to be full of historical recipes published across the history of what may be America’s most famous newspaper, and that was good enough for me. I preordered the tome of knowledge right after watching Amanda’s video, and it arrived in a thicker box than I ever received for a single cookbook. That’s because its like four cookbooks stacked on top of each other, page after page of recipes with very little illustration or photography. It’s in the style of those old cookbooks that I love so much, and I loved it.

Upon first opening the book, I found timelines for each section of recipes detailing the history of the topic. Tightly packed recipes followed, all of which tagged with their original publication year and the name of the writer. There is absolutely no way a person could hope to make every single recipe from this thing within the span of a year, much less get a true feeling for the thing in a single month, so we started working on it clear back on its publication date of November 2, 2021.

This is a NYT compilation, so if you’ve spent much time looking at New York TImes recipes, you’re probably aware that there may be some ingredient availability issues in America’s heartland. That’s perfectly okay for once. There are so many recipes packed into this encyclopedia that you’ll be able to find something you can shop for at your local grocery store without a problem. Time, however, might not be on your side.

Some of the historical baking projects I originally looked at to introduce myself to this book required an overnight rise or rest that I simply don’t have the patience nor the refrigerator space for at the time. All of this was gleaned from just flipping through the pages with very little actual cooking time yet pressed to cook out of here.

I expect that due to the nature of some of these recipes coming from the kitchens of famous chefs and not just the food team of the newspaper that there will be more than just those I saw on my initial paging through that will ask too much of even me. Still, there are promises of interesting historical background within these pages to add further to my understanding of American cuisine and it’s development.

If you are interested in joining me for a new month and a new year of cooking, The Essential NYT Cookbook can be ordered on Amazon. You can view the same video that inspired me to order my own book here at this link and decide if it’s right for you beyond my descriptions you’ve read so far.

After a short break from cookbook of the month over the holiday months, I’m ready to jump in again. Be sure to keep an eye on our instagram and facebook pages for images of the recipes as I make them so you aren’t waiting around for an update article. Happy New Year, and Happy Cooking!

]]><![CDATA[An Unapologetic Cookbook: Final Review]]>Sun, 07 Nov 2021 11:24:20 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/an-unapologetic-cookbook-final-review

We’ve covered the Starches and Staples from Scratch sections of An Unapologetic Cookbook in deep detail up to this point because of my initial concerns with accessibility in the cookbook for a normal home cook. Hardware and ingredient accessibility was less of an issue than initially anticipated-- and I’m happy for that. The rest of this book is broken down into primary protein sections such as fish, chicken, etc. It’s built upon the first two sections in minor ways.

You can expect to see some of the items from the From Scratch portions of the book called for in nearly every recipe. Among the ingredient lists in each recipe, you’ll see those guys in big bold letters to remind you to refer back. You do not have to do that if you don’t want to. Many of the times this happens, its for the sauces, butters, or condiments you could have created earlier on. We live in a world of convenience. Use those conveniences when you want to, or don’t.

A relieving aspect of these bigger recipes is that Weissman does provide options for some of the stranger ingredients he calls for. An example of this comes in his mojo braised pork recipe that mentions seville oranges, but he also allows for limes. Nobody is getting seville oranges in their neighborhood grocery store. You’re a lucky person if you do. This lowered my concerns about the accessibility of the book a lot. Thank you, Weissman.

When it comes to actually cooking from the rest of the cookbook, there are a lot of options. Weissman addresses many commonly purchased proteins in the modern american household, including those dreaded chicken breasts that strike horror into so many cooking personalities. He isn’t scared, and you shouldn’t be either. If you want to go big, you can of course try his bougier recipes such as his duck breasts.

There are plenty of pasta dish recipes mixed into their own section with some of Weissman’s sandwiches from his youtube show and a few we haven’t seen before. This is a good place to start if you’re shorter on time. A nice BLT made with the sandwich loaf that we cooked out of the starches from scratch is among the easiest and most identifiable. The pasta recipes all contain call backs to the pasta recipes earlier in the book as well, but fitting in your store bought pastas here likely won’t impact the taste.

As the weather gets colder across the country, the soup section in these recipes is most attractive to me. The mushroom soup can be entirely sourced from our local producers in Green Bay. Our winter markets are just around the corner, and Produce with Purpose has most of the mushrooms he asks for if you’re not a morning person on the weekends.

The book is capped off with a small dessert section, but let’s face it, I didn’t exactly buy this book for dessert. There are some promising recipes back there that are of products I’ve never tried to make before-- such as Russian Tea Cakes. There are also chocolate chip cookies and peanut butter cookies, two of the most common cookie types in the USA. We’ve all got our favorite recipe, and maybe you could do the hard work of dueling your favorite against Papa’s cookies. I did not.

Your options here are endless, and as with the earlier sections of the book, there are both simple recipes for beginners and more advanced, time consuming ones for folks that fancy themselves budding chefs or very practiced home cooks. You’ll often have to pull out premade ingredients of some of the earlier recipes to cut some time off for yourself.

This is a book for the fans. The photography is gorgeous and makes me hungry every time I turn the page. It’s also been a NYT bestselling cookbook every week since it came out. If you’re still thinking about if you want it for yourself, look no further than our ratings below.

Accessibility - 4 out of 5

Joshua Weissman is still a fancy man with fancy ideas about cooking that often don’t line up with the typical home cook’s idea of how they want to cook. Including many from scratch condiments, cheeses, etc. is just his way of life. It’s not mine, and it’s not the way of a lot of cooks. That’s okay. You CAN use premade of the ingredients that his later recipes refer you back into the from scratch areas from. Very few ingredients are difficult to find in the regular grocery store, but some recipes do struggle with Fancy Ingredient Syndrome. There’s something to cook even if you’ve got the most bare bones grocery store, but you may miss out on the chance for the good stuff.

Difficulty - 3 out of 5

Like I said, he’s still a fancy man with fancy ideas. If you cook through this book as he intended by making every single from scratch ingredient referred to in his major recipes from scratch and then do the actual recipe, the sheer amount of time will keep you in the kitchen all night depending on your choice. This book is a challenge to treat it as the chef intended. Less so if you allow yourself the grace to cook with premade anything.

Originality - 3 out of 5

A fair amount of the recipes in this book are available through the chef’s youtube channel and website prior to the publication of the book. You don’t need to buy the book for his most famous recipes, like his milk bread rolls, etc. I have six different books on my shelf teaching me how to make mayonnaise from scratch, and about four that have some of the same pasta recipes albeit with their own spins. An Unapologetic Cookbook is a testament of Weissman’s style and a great gift for a fan. Collectors like myself might not find a ton of new stuff to try.

]]><![CDATA[That Sounds So Good - Nov 2021]]>Mon, 01 Nov 2021 13:09:41 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/that-sounds-so-good-nov-2021

Our November Cookbook of the Month is from an author we’ve already reviewed once before, That Sounds So Good by Carla Lalli Music. We enjoyed her first foray into cookbook writing while she was still at Bon Appetit-- Where Cooking Begins-- and she won a James Beard Award for the thing. I’ve gifted her first book to several family members first moving out on their own either during or after college as a flexible meal planning aid, and I hoped that That Sounds So Good will follow the same format.

I was pleased to see that one of the ways that she writes recipes that I enjoyed so much, the Spin It sections in the ingredients, remained. They no longer appear beside the initial ingredient list but now at the bottom of the recipe. That’s okay. It’s still there, and it was a relief to find it again in her second outing. It’s perhaps the most identifiable Carla Lalli Music Thing in a cookbook, and it makes her style so accessible to everyone. No extra grocery store trips for one ingredient you forgot. Chances are, you’ve got something in your pantry to spin with when you’re cooking.

That Sounds So Good is broken down less by ingredient or meal type and more by ‘situation’. This is obvious just in the titles of these sections like ‘Monday through Thursday’. Week night meals for the days you can’t be bothered to waste too much time. Nothing celebratory, just good enough to get you through the week and still be tasty. This is a direct contrast to her previous book where the sections were demarcated largely by the ingredients with a large section at the front to teach you about different techniques.

That huge portion of the first book dedicated to technique made it a great first cookbook for so many people. Even I learned things as a more practiced home cook, such as how to properly confit something. Cooking something over a longer length of time in animal fat isn’t something I often do. Really, the only time I ever actually did it was for a carnitas recipe that didn’t turn out quite so well. It was not a Lalli Music recipe, however. So that’s a story for another time.

As expected, Carla did not use the front portion of her cookbook to review the techniques that she would later employ within her recipes. Where Cooking Begins devoted such a large portion of the book to this endeavor that she likely didn’t feel the need to do it again nor consider it necessary. People like me will have both books-- so the references will exist if we need them either way. This is also a book about eating good with the effort a Wednesday evening requires, which should be little.

No special grocery store runs when you start a recipe because you forgot an extra special ingredient. You shouldn't have to get on Amazon six days ahead of time to order a spice that you've only ever heard of in this book and this book alone. It's a homey way to cook that lands perfectly in the type of thing we love around here, and its what made Carla's last book such a hit. I wanted more of it, and we finally got it.

We’ve waited for this book from the moment she announced it on her social media accounts. If you’d like a preview before buying in, there are pages available to look at on Amazon of some of her recipes. She also has videos available for free through her youtube channel while some are also available through her Patreon-- but that of course costs money via pledge. I’m prepared for a great month of cooking after our last foray into a Lalli Music cookbook, and I hope not to be disappointed.

This book just launched on October 19th, and you can still get it for a slight discount on Amazon if that’s your preferred book purchasing method. Otherwise, it is available at many bookstores. The way this book is broken down doesn’t allow for clearly demarcated individual section review quite as well as our last book, but we’ll figure something out to update you on our progress as we go. Starting with this book, you can find me cooking from it on Tiktok and see my actual progress, wins, and losses. Thanksgiving will get in the way slightly of cooking as much out of here as I might like, but we’ll do our best.

We have already started cooking from the book before the debut of this article, so enjoy this picture of the Spicy Seafood Stew out of the Lazy Lunches section. Isn’t it gorgeous? Most of the food in here is, so if nothing else, get the book to look at some amazing photographs of delicious food.

Thanks for joining me for yet another cookbook. I’m so proud to have kept up with this for two months, and look forward to making it to a full year streak.

]]><![CDATA[Starches from Scratch]]>Tue, 19 Oct 2021 18:53:24 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/starches-from-scratchIf you thought the from scratch cooking of An Unapologetic cookbook ended with the staples, you don’t know Joshua Weissman. Nearly every episode of his youtube show includes some kind of bread or pasta making from scratch to level up whatever kind of meal he’s showing you how to replicate. As an amatuer bread baker, this is more interesting to me than the Staples from Scratch portion that opened up the book.

Right toward the front of this section is his own sourdough starter method which includes rye flour. Rye flour can be hard to find in a traditional grocery store as well. I had intended to replicate his method for his own sourdough, but I’m ressurecting my sourdough baking habit through the Tartine Bread method using the organic, artisan bread flour I get from Produce with Purpose every few weeks. I have no doubt that the rye flour makes a difference on sourdough production, but it’s another barrier to cooking in most small US cities that we don’t need if we’re going to test this book in earnest.

We have made some of the other breads in this chapter already after copying the recipe from his videos: his famous milk bread variations into multiple shapes and sizes. Dinner rolls, hamburger buns, or a full loaf are all possible with the dough that he produces. Having made more versions of milkbread in the past-- one of which included that illusive rye flour-- I enjoy the consistency of his with pure bread flour instead. You can test this method without purchasing the cookbook, as he has the recipe for the dinner rolls on his website. I started making these rolls every few months since giving them a shot for my husband and I’s at home Thanksgiving last year, and it’s also my go to burger bun dough. Aren’t they pretty?

I was intrigued by his bagel loaf the minute I turned the page onto it. We’re bagel people in this house, and my husband is an everything bagel man to a fault. He wants nothing but that, and if I get plain ones, he pours that everything bagel seasoning all over the cream cheese to get even a shadow of the taste into his bagel. I thought, could this bagel loaf be the answer? This was a promising weekend treat to whip up on a Friday and slice Saturday morning.

The bagel bread is a special thing I won’t do all the time. His sandwich loaf, however, is such a simple bread recipe that I would recommend it to anyone who’s just putting their toes into the bread baking water for the first time. It comes together quickly. There are two separate proofing periods, but you get an excellent result out of it. I mean, just look at this loaf. This sucker will be the best for its intended purpose: sandwiches. I did a poor job rolling it up so that little hole going through the dough is more user error than recipe error.

There are many options in this portion of the cookbook-- too many for me to try them all. I do, however, trust Weissman’s baking recipes implicitly after so many successful creations from his milkbread multipurpose dough. You can whip that fucker into all kinds of shapes to fulfill the roll that you need it to fill, as we mentioned earlier. Know your limitations in skill, and I believe you can bake out of this section with ease.

His pasta dough recipe that gets a lot of work in his videos is also in this part of the book, and it’s suitable for any cut pasta. It’s too wet for extruding in my opinion, but you can easily repurpose this dough into any shape you cut or fill. It’s fundamental to some of the later recipes just like it is for his videos. Familiarize yourself-- but be warned. You’ll need the fancy pasta roller gear. If this is beyond your price point as a starting home cook, no one will judge you for buying premade pasta for his later recipes. Not even Papa himself will judge you for that one.

As with the staples from scratch portion of the book, utilizing these recipes for later on in the book will simply be up to the amount of time you’re willing to spend to get to a final result. Papa will tell you that it’s more satisfying if you start from scratch. I don’t agree that that holds up all the time. Sometimes you just want a tasty dinner, and shortcuts are okay when you can make them. There are fewer pleasures as great as fresh bread, however, so weigh that expense of time and energy against convenience a little heavier.

Next week, we’ll dive into the other recipes in the book and utilize what we can from these earlier sections. I will be sure to note where these staples come in and may need replacement of store bought ingredients if you’re in a hurry. Thanks for sticking with us this October. We’ll announce our November book soon too!

]]><![CDATA[Staples from Scratch]]>Mon, 11 Oct 2021 13:57:06 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/staples-from-scratchBeyond Weissman’s introduction to his book lies the first segment, Staples from Scratch-- and let me tell you, there’s a lot here to try to make from scratch rather than buy in your local grocery store. Some of these are things you see in most higher end cookbooks, such as homemade mayo methods and making cheeses by hand. Some of these processes include intense labor and time management, but I’m down for that now that I’m working from home with most of my time.

Right out of the gate, I know that making the cheeses may be out of the reach of some of us. The milk requirements are a little steep and hard to find at a normal grocery store. Raw milks aren’t sold in most grocery stores, and ultra-pasteurized is out of the question for these processes. You may get lucky and find a normal pasteurized milk, which is good enough. You probably won’t find goat milk for chevre, though. I’d have to find an actual goat farmer for that even in the great state of Wisconsin.

I started a condiments journey as one of my first cooks for this book, and yet again hit an ingredient issue. Sherry vinegar is for some reason not stocked at the nearest grocery store I live by, and road construction by the next closest makes me not want to go out there at normal human hours. I decided to try to do his ketchup recipe with apple cider vinegar, another lightly flavored vinegar that is more easily accessible so that I didn’t skip over one of the things that I was most interested in trying in this cookbook.

I go through a bottle of ketchup at least every two months, sometimes faster if we’re ordering in a lot of burgers or chicken tenders/wings that always come with fries. A can of organic tomato paste is still less than a dollar, so bringing together my own ketchup from just pantry ingredients is a really attractive idea-- and something you can show off with when you’ve got guests. That seems like the point of a lot of things in this portion of the book, but that’s okay. I like showing off with homemade goodies too.

Making ketchup isn’t the crapshoot that making your own mayo can be. The ingredients go into the pot up until they bubble, and then you’re done. There’s no fussing with the emulsification of oil and fat. The recipe calls for sherry vinegar, but that’s oddly difficult to find in smaller grocery stores. I substituted Apple Cider Vinegar which is much more readily available. I accidentally let the mixture reduce way longer than the recipe calls for, but it still came out looking very nice. I’m excited to try it on fries soon!

There’s something awesome about this low effort from scratch preparation that makes me feel a whole lot better about trying to get through all of the sauces and ideas in this area. I’ll probably never make cheese, but you know I’ll do this over and over again. We’re facing an onslaught of late season peppers coming out of the patio garden, so the salsas and jams that come into play later in this book are an attractive feature.

If you haven’t tried making compound butters to serve on top of steaks or to add flavor to veggie sautes, there are some combinations in this book as well to help put you on the path to butter enlightenment. This section of the book is more educational in theory than full blown recipes. A lot of these things can and often do make appearances later on in the cookbook if you wish to fulfill the role with something you made from scratch rather than store bought versions of many staple products. Not every home cook is going to have time for this, so if you really don’t want to, you don’t have to worry about it.

You can move on to the starches from scratch that come right after-- and that’s what we’re doing. With cooler weather coming in this week, it's the perfect time to do some more bread baking. We may even play with fresh made pasta again to get my husband involved in the kitchen.

An Unapologetic Cookbook is still deeply on sale at Amazon for 40% off if you’re interested in joining me the rest of October. It’s also a great gift for the youtube obsessed foodies in your life, so keep that in mind as Christmas gets closer too!

]]><![CDATA[An Unapologetic Cookbook: October]]>Mon, 04 Oct 2021 11:09:18 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/an-unapologetic-cookbook-october

Joshua Weissman of youtube fame released his first cookbook in September, An Unapologetic Cookbook, and this cookbook is of course our October Cookbook of the month for 2021. I expect this book to be more technically challenging than many that we’ve reviewed as part of this process after watching Weissman on youtube since the pandemic began. I’ve adopted his dinner roll recipe permanently after trying it for our at home Thanksgiving last year. I’ve watched him push himself as a chef through cooking challenges in his old fine dining stomping ground.

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And now I ask the question, how much of his cookbook is achievable for the typical home chef? He often employs kitchen equipment that is out of reach for most home cooks in his videos, so I expect to find this issue present in the cookbook as well. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to give it a shot, however. His voice as a chef on youtube is present in the early writing of the cookbook so far, and that’s one of the things that makes his work attractive in the first place

The cookbook opens with a section on making a good amount of things from scratch. Sauces, breads, pasta, and even cheeses-- some of which will be a little bit beyond the realm of possibility or desire for me. I don’t think I’ll be making cheese any time soon. But! If I can find the type of milk called for, maybe we’ll give it a shot so you don’t have to.

Many of his famous recipes from the show are now enshrined forever in this cookbook, including those dinner rolls I’m so fond of. It’ll save me the trouble of pulling the recipe up on my phone, which has more than once caused me to miss a step in his recipes when I’ve got my screen closed. Alas, there are also recipes in here that I’ve never seen him make on the show. This lends more value to the book for fans that have cooked from his online recipes extensively, and it’s a smart move as a recipe writer.

Man’s got his own cream of mushroom soup recipe in this book. How many of us have cans of that shit in our pantry waiting for the time that the need for an old fashioned midwestern casserole? Have we ever wanted to eat it on its own? God knows I don’t, but the picture of his mushroom soup recipe makes me want to eat his now that soup season has arrived in Northeast Wisconsin.

Joshua Weissman’s first cookbook adventure will likely prove to be the most challenging cookbook we’ve tried this year-- even if we’ve only worked through maybe two or three since 2021 began. Buckle up for equal parts complaints and praises.

What are some of your favorite Joshua Weissman trademarks? With some guidance from my readers, perhaps I can hunt down recipes you might be interested in to discuss later this month. We may continue our trend of cooking through the month and condensing our efforts into the last article like with did with Cook This Book. If you want to join us, you can pick up An Unapologetic Cookbook wherever books are sold. Amazon has a discount going still if you’re not boycotting our shipping overlords.

]]><![CDATA[Cook This Book: Final Review]]>Thu, 30 Sep 2021 12:02:10 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/cook-this-book-final-reviewWoops. Here we are again at the end of a month with another cookbook and I didn’t write a single article about a single dinner I made out of the book. The god’s honest truth? The simplicity of the dishes I tested made it difficult to write about. I have a few paragraphs about each, so what better way to discuss the book at the end of the month than to string them all together? Cook this Book from Molly Baz, I have found, is an exercise in simplicity, accessibility, and fun.

Our first cook became dinner for dungeons and dragons night: a quickly prepared pasta dish from this month’s cookbook of the month: Orecchiette with Bacon, snap peas, and ricotta. The ingredients are exactly that with little prior preparation. This proved to be a perfect dish to start with in Cook This Book to get to know the author better. Simple in both its ingredients and its preparation, I realized quickly this would be a theme for my time with Molly’s recipes.

Brown bacon that you’ve cut into small bites. Boom. Snap peas in the bacon fat. Boom. Orecchiette done boiling? Drop it in the pan with the bacon and the snap peas and a few spoonfuls of ricotta. Boom, dinner done. Hit it with some pepper. Eat good tonight.

Orzo al limone is another of her simple pasta dishes that I’ll whip up for myself now as a simple carby lunch when I’m working from home. So simple, it’s just a cup of boiled orzo pasta with some lemon zest, seasoning, and cheese. This is one I didn’t get a picture of even if I made it like three times this month. Woops.

The largest and most difficult cook I took on from this book was her milk braised chicken legs with kale, bacon, and beans. The actual difficulty lies in balancing the cooking time of the chicken with when to add the rest of the ingredients. It is, however, one of the more healthy meals I’ve pulled out of these cookbooks over the years with very few carbs. It received two thumbs up and many eating groans of comfort from my husband, so that’s a win!

The good news is that most, if not all, of these recipes are made with ingredients that are readily available at your local grocery store. We didn’t order a single ‘exotic’ ingredient from Amazon. There was no seven stop journey to different grocers looking for a special spice or cut of meat. I cannot stress enough how important that is in a cookbook these days. So many of the ones we review on this website wind up requiring extra effort during shopping. Cook This Book was not that book.

Accessibility - 5 out of 5

Cook This Book doesn’t have a fancy ingredient problem. It’s also accessible for the budding home cook through QR codes scattered throughout the book that will lead to videos of Molly showing you how to perform a certain technique if you’re new to cooking. Equipment is very rarely an issue to overcome, the exception of which for some starting cooks may be a good size dutch oven that’s called for in a few of the recipes most attractive to myself personally.

The front 50 pages of the book are full of tips and tricks useable for almost any skill set, but especially for people just starting out. From reminders to always be seasoning your food to whole lists of pantry ingredients that she always keeps on hand, it provides an excellent framework to prepare you for the recipes that follow after the introductory portions of the book.

Difficulty - 4 out of 5

Like many cookbooks, the difficulty is what you make it. Not all of Molly’s recipes come with the useful QR code buddy to show you how to do something a little tricky. Her cookbook contains many separate categories for you to sink your teeth into, and within those sections are recipes ranging from very simple and quick to somewhat complex and time consuming. Her instruction on each keeps the difficulty low for an experienced home cook and makes the process easier for a new home cook.

This book makes a great housewarming present for just this reason.

Originality - 4 out of 5

Molly’s writing style is somewhat irritating for an middle millennial that never got into the unnecessarily shortening words trend, but the actual content of the recipes is solid. There are different ways to cook a whole chicken in this book that I haven’t yet encountered in others, even if some of the techniques are reminiscent of her other former Bon App colleagues. I remain pleasantly surprised by the recipes I’ve tried and other that I’ve only read. There is a lot of promise in this book and a lot of fun to be had.

]]><![CDATA[Cook This Book: CBOM Intro]]>Thu, 02 Sep 2021 11:39:11 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/cook-this-book-cbom-intro

Cook this Book by Molly Baz came out several months ago, and it’s sat on my shelf waiting for me to get the drive back to try another Cookbook of the Month. I even posted a picture of it on my facebook once claiming it’d be coming the next month. It didn’t, nor did it come the month after that. Only now, September 2021, and I sitting down to write an introductory article to a cookbook that I already have some mixed feelings about.

Molly Baz, famous for her time at Bon Appetit, has been one of the personalities on their youtube channel at the time that I didn’t know how I felt about them. I thought she could get annoying. I thought she was a little bougie for my midwestern sensibilities. Then the scandal with Adam Rapoport happened. She so rarely did any videos without that asshole there, and I realized that maybe he was the problem.

After the Rapoport scandal and the reveal that the BIPOC chefs on staff were not being paid for equal screen time on the youtube channel, Molly was one of the first to leave in solidarity with her coworkers. She now runs a patreon subscription only video service to teach viewers how to cook. I’m not invested enough in her development to subscribe to it while many of her fellow former Bon App staffers have gone to free platforms and collaborated with established youtubers. I did, however, buy her cookbook.

No cooking has been done yet, but I am reminded of her bougieness in moments when several recipes have unnecessarily shortened words for ingredients in the titles. Ants on a Log Cel Sal, for example. What the hell is that? A celery salad, as the attached picture and further context clues will teach you. Sal is a salad shortening regularly featured in her other recipes prior to the book. I don’t enjoy that style choice, but it is a personalization that made sense with her established brand after Bon Appetit.

You can purchase Cook the Book at Amazon or your local bookstores to join our cooking adventures this month. The first recipe comes from her noodles section: Oricchiette with Bacon, snap peas, and Ricotta. You might get lucky and find some late season peas at the farmer’s markets, depending on where you are in the world.

These recipe reviews will be part of our weekly content going forward as I begin writing for Nosh Green Bay this month as well. This is an exciting opportunity that I hope will bring more attention to the food and the people cooking it in Northeast Wisconsin. Please join me over there each month and say hello.

Thanks for reading, and let’s get cooking.

]]><![CDATA[Homestyle Cookery: March CBoM]]>Sat, 06 Mar 2021 14:46:01 GMThttps://www.eating-normal.com/cookbooks/homestyle-cookery-march-cbom

September of 2020 was the release of Matty Matheson’s Homestyle Cookery, which he debuted alongside several cooking videos with recipes from his book. I watched every single one. I love that guy. I guess it has as much to do with his cooking as it does that he’s a loud and occasionally obnoxious dude. My husband was a loud and occasionally obnoxious man when I met him. He still can be, sometimes, but the professionalism of news broadcast has toned him down a bit. Matty Matheson is never toned down.

I ordered Homestyle Cookery shortly after it’s release, but I haven’t really sat down with it and cooked yet to decide how I feel about its contents. Prior to writing this article, the only recipe I tried was his Chicken Fried Steak, which we’ll discuss in another article later on. The recipes Matty selected for his youtube channel all looked amazing, but some of them were a little labor intense or the ingredients difficult to get in Northeast Wisconsin. I don’t know any hunters yet that can get me rabbit. I don’t see rabbit in the store. I wish I did, but I don’t. I wondered if this was a common problem throughout the whole book, and that was enough for me to order it.

So March will be our month to decipher the secrets of Matty Matheson’s Homestyle Cookery. As usual, I’ll try to do one recipe a week to discuss on our website. If you’re a fan of Matty and want me to try one of the recipes from his videos, let me know. You can order Homestyle Cookery from Amazon or find it at your local bookstore where cookbooks are sold. It’s done pretty well in sales and was out of stock for a bit there through Amazon. Let’s support a loud weirdo.

If his youtube persona is sometimes hard for you to get behind, know that his actual cooking is pretty awesome. There are a variety of recipes available in this cookbook that aren’t going to have the ingredient trouble like I described with his rabbit dish above. The book is broken down into sections such as bread, stock, vegetables, etc. You’ll be able to find something to try, and we found many somethings to try. Below is a list of recipes you might see us cover this month.

Recipes we’re looking at:

Bannock ‘Ghost Bread’ Page 26
Ricotta Egg Yolk Raviolo Page 161
Sesame Seed Rolls page 21
Beautiful shrimp dumplings page 154
Kombu steamed fingerling potatoes page 91

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